{ Saturday, February 15, 2003 }
The equivalent of the French esprit d'escalier.
LINK | 4:15 PM | TB
[pedantry]Actually, the plural is treppverter, mit an e.[/pedantry]
language hat | February 16, 2003 7:29 AManother great thing about yiddish is that it has no curse words--merely vulgar or rude phrases that dissected into their individual words would be entirely PG-13. instead of saying 'fuck off,' one might say 'schlupen kupen vant' (not sure the actual spelling), which means 'hit your head against the wall'!
also, when I was six, my godfather, who was staying with my family and re-doing the roof on our house, had a bunch of little metal plaques made that said 'peter schlepped here' (schlepped = carried/worked; as a play on slept), and nailed them up all over the place--over the telephone in the hall, and under the eaves of the second story roof, so the only time you could see it was when you stood on the first story roof-ridge and looked right at it.
m | February 16, 2003 10:36 AMI imagine the reason Yiddish has no swear words is that most Yiddish speakers lived in Slavic-speaking areas and were able to borrow from the rich Slavic troves of swear words as needed.
My fave: Es zol burikes in dayn boych vaksen! Or for the short, punchy line: Gey kak af'n yam!
language hat | February 18, 2003 8:35 AMtroves of swear words! my dad lived in poland and romania for several years, and can unleash strings of curses that last for a good couple minutes. unfortunately this was really the extent of my early-life language learning..
miriam | February 21, 2003 1:04 PM-
| September 21, 2006 3:01 AM{ Post a comment }
I know it as "Treppengochme", wherein "gochme" is wisdom, but also a bit more then that: the assertiveness to express it as well.
Oh, I see Americans spell it "chuchmah". What a gotspe.
ijsbrand | February 16, 2003 3:45 AM